Asian Women on the Telephone - Awott (2008)

Born in 2007 from the ashes of three underground bands – Yarche-1000-Solnts, DimenticarmiNON!, and Lisichkin Khleb – a Moscow experimental outfit Asian Women on the Telephone is one of the new Russian avant-garde movement’s most innovative and for a time successful bands… but also perhaps one of its most misunderstood. Their artistic approach draws inspiration from the early Soviet-era Russian Futurism and Dadaism, and echoes a view of society as rigid, absurd, and schematic. They produce the strangest kind of music which collects influences from Kraut Rock, Noise-Rock, Electronics, Free Improvisation, Sound Collage, etc. and channels it into idiosyncratic, sarcastic vision. No overdubbing, no analog mixing or mastering… This is lo-fi music for a low-grade world. In fact, AWOT have never stressed their musical content, regarding music just as an accompaniment to freaky costume-and-masked performances they set. Being banned periodically from Moscow club-venues due to rumored connection to "a mystical ritualistic sect", the band focused on studio work and put out a string of messy recordings with unique packaging (by Maxim Ionov) which were a true labor of love and couldn’t be reproduced in proper manufacturing quantities… Still and all, nothing can be compared to live gigs by AWOTT who is a six-piece ensemble now featuring: Oriental Yid (drums, guitar), Good Enough Freundin (guitar, vocal, drums), Brown Polizei (keyboards, voice, bass), Divine Gift (percussion, voice), Mutter Land (drums, percussion, bass), and Lewd Primat (bass, voice). 

First ever Awott recording dated back 2008 was a result of unskilled instruments and sound manipulations. Recorded in the home studio of the Moscow’s most respectful underground sound constructor Max Ionov. The record was aimed to reproduce the feeling of the legendary Faust Tapes, Boredoms Super Roots series and the Residents Eskimo album. Rather making the intentionally primitive scathes of the songs than actual song structures. Creating the atmosphere of ritual and spiritual songs played and randomly sung by some kind of lost and forgotten tribe. (freemusicarchive)